Talking exclusively to The Telegraph, Beard, the director of the Facebook Platform, said that search will have to “go social” but admitted that a tie-up between the social network and its major rival Google would not make good business sense, despite the benefits to consumers.

Beard said that search needed to go social so that people could get really good product recommendations from their most trusted sources, their friends, as well links to sites where they can buy the items.

Using a personal example of his recent need to buy new luggage, Beard said: “Before the internet you would ask your friends for all your recommendations…then along came ecommerce and products like Amazon… which are great for buying or getting a product, but they don’t have any people on them so the discovery mechanism has now kind of been busted for a lot of things.